Constitution Day 2014: Morality, Freedom and Religion

     In the last century, there have been several scholarly works written presenting evidence that the Founding Fathers of the United States of America led via a Biblical world view.  Some of these  are:   Frank Lambert, The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America (2003); Mark Beliles and Douglas Anderson, Contending for the Constitution, (Providence Foundation eds., 2005); John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution: The Faith of Our Founding Fathers (1987).  The leaders had the courage of their convictions, without which the developing country would have been doomed.  The hard fought for freedoms would have been for naught.   Thankfully, the founders and colonialists recognized and did not reject the divine intervention that led to a united commitment to do something stupendous.  Beliles and Anderson, supra, at 55 – 56. For years, this nation continued to live by a moral code which brought respect and admiration by the many people around the world.  At the same time, some leaders hated United States for those beliefs.  Without reservation, America has pushed back and defeated evil, protecting its allies as well as itself.   As time has gone by, distanced now by well over two hundred years from the work of our forefathers, citizens have become complacent.  “In God We Trust” is said in a robotic way, with no meaning behind it.  Basic human rights include the right to kill an unborn child, Christianity is mocked and not to be proclaimed publicly.  Douglas Phillips, Esq., Do Laws and Standards Evolve? Acts and Facts (1998) available at http://www.icr.org/article/do-laws-standards-evolve/ .  History is in the process of being re-written; some go so far as denying the Holocaust ever happened.  David Williams, Rewriting History: Holocaust revisionism today, (2012) available at http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/shop/rewriting-history.pdf   The government has become bloated, slowing turning this from a country of self-determination, to one of entitlements, to a “welfare state” looking to it for salvation instead of from the sovereign God.  “Once abolish the God and the government becomes the God. . . . Wherever the people do not believe in something beyond the world, they will worship the world.” G.K. Chesterton, Christendom in Dublin:  Personal Impressions of the 31st Eucharistic Congress (Peter Costello, 3rd ed. 2012). 

     A conviction held by the peoples of the first colonies was that three elements were needed to succeed:  Religion, Morality and knowledge.  These words were frequently interchanged with piety, virtue and learning.  Religion/piety meant Christianity; morality/virtue meant Christian character; knowledge meant Biblical world view.  Beliles and Anderson, supra, at 60.

In the Northwest Ordinance from 1787, it was written (emphasis added),

• Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged. The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent; and, in their property, rights, and liberty, they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress; but laws founded in justice and humanity, shall from time to time be made for preventing wrongs being done to them, and for preserving peace and friendship with them.

Northwest Ordinance: An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States North West of the River Ohio, art. 3 (1787). 
     From Founding Father George Washington: 

• . . . [V]irtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government . . .. Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it - It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.

George Washington, Farewell Address (1796) available at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp .    The Biblical world view knows that God is love, and desires man know His law order so that man may “obey and reap the blessings that flow from such obedience.”  Roger Bern, A Biblical Model for Analysis of Issues of Law and Public Policy, 7 Regent U.L. Rev. 103 (1995).  The Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, informs man that if God’s commandments are kept, and the ordained institutions of Family and Civil Government rule by those commandments, forever and always, then the fruits and blessings of God will be provided; survival is without question. Bern, supra.

     Unfortunately, as the years have gone, there has been, to coin a term: ‘government creep.’  The founders intended this not to be a nation of handouts, whereby the peoples expect the government to provide everything, for anything they need is a right.  Abraham Lincoln would have rallied against this for he stated:

• The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do for themselves in their separate capacities.  In all that the people can individually do as well for themselves, government ought not to interfere.

Roy P. Baslel et al, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953), 221 (July 1, 1854).

     Religion has been watered down, and the Freedom of Religion has been bastardized into Freedom from Religion.  As immigrants come in, no longer is it expected to become part of the “melting pot” of United States; instead, they are American citizens but there is no intention of integrating into the America’s culture.  For example, on September 14, 2014, the 29th annual Muslim Day Parade was held.   A troop of Girl Scouts form New Jersey matched in Muslim attire.  There were pro-Islam floats and a “demonstration of a hanging.”   Someone dressed in a military uniform rode in a two-wheeled cart.  Supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood pulled the cart along, while the man “cracked a whip.”   Mike Opelka, The Shocking Display Seen at NYC’s Muslim Day Parade (Sept. 15, 2014,10:02 a.m.) http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/09/15/the-shocking-display-seen-at-nycs-muslim-day-parade/

     Greg Koukl points out that Christians call out today “give us our America back.”  However, it has not been lost; they gave it up.  Rather than defend Christianity in the public square, they shied away from standing up for God.  The vacuum was filled with secularists, including the “the disciples of Dewey, Marx, Darwin, Freud, Nietzsche, Skinner, and a host of others . . ..”  Greg Koul, The Faith of Our Fathers, (Feb. 28, 2013)   http://www.str.org/articles/the-faith-of-our-fathers#.VBZmZhY0-NM.   It is no longer common that “morality and religion” is taught in the home.  Government and the public school system has replaced the parent.  Furthermore, as the leaders of this country abandon the true foundation of law which was born from God, policy stems from the current President’s values.  The President appoints the life-term justices to the Supreme Court, therefore extending the reach and ‘tenure’ of his or her ideological beliefs (if the Senate consents).  The President also appoints fifteen cabinet members to the federal departments that only report to the executive level; he can create new cabinet-level departments as well.  Thomas F. Goldman & Henry R. Cheeseman, The Paralegal Professional 317 (4th ed. 2014).  Roger Bern draws from Roberto Unger, “chief theoretician and inspirational leader of Critical Legal Studies,” in stating,

• Those who have power may thereby impose their will upon others, yet they can make no appeal to any higher standard than themselves to justify either the rightness of their moral choices or their imposition of them on others.

Unger, supra at 3. 

     Two hundred and twenty years since the Constitution was written, how much longer can the country survive as it has moved miles away from the intentions of the Founding Fathers?  Only if “morality, religion and knowledge” is transfused back into the veins of each and every state.  United States is on a precipice and without those with the Biblical world view fighting for it, it will virtually burn like Rome did.  According to John Adams, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” John Adams, Letter to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts, (1798), available at  http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2107 .  What the United States need is a new “Army of God,” but instead of marching to seize the President, it should capture the public square.   The Army can bring forth a new Magna Carta, to reaffirm the “authority of God upon matters of liberty, civil authority and earthly rule, . . . [R]ights of freedom to which all people are entitled.”  Beliles and Anderson, supra at 85.

~KellyJaye, as written for my Legal Studies classes at Liberty University (so I plagiarized myself).